LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 103 which God hath promised to them that love him. As Mr. George Herbert saith in his Church Militant, "Gold and the gospel never did agree ; Religion always sides with poverty." "One knight, Sir Ralph Clare, who lived among us, did more to hinder my greater successes than amultitude of others 'couldhave done. Though he was an old man, of great courtship and civility, and very temperate as to diet, apparel, and sports, and seldom would swear louder than ' by his troth,' etc., and showed me much personal reverence and respect, beyond my desert, and we con- versed together with love and familiarity ; yet, (having no relish for this preciseness, and extemporary praying, and making so much ado for heaven ; nor liking that which went beyond the pace of saying the common prayer; and also the interest of himselfand of his civil and ecclesiastical parties leading him to be ruled by Dr. Hammond,) his coming but once a day to church on the Lord's days, and his abstaining from the sacrament, as if we kept not suffi- ciently to the old way, and because we used not the common pray- er book when it would have caused us to be sequestered, did cause a great part of the parish to follow him, anddo' as he did, when else our success and concord would have been much more happy than it was. And yet his civility and yielding muchbeyond others of his party, sending his family to be catechised and personally in- structed, did sway with almost the worst among ús, to the like. Indeedwe had two other persons of quality, Col. John Bridges, and at last Mrs. Hanmer, that came from other places to live there, and were truly and judiciously religious, who did much good ; for when the rich are indeed religious,'and overcome their temptations, as they maybe supposed better than others, because their conquest is greater, so they may do more good than others, because their talents are more. But such are always comparatively few. " 28. Another thing that helped me, was my not meddling with tithes or worldly business, whereby I had my whole time, except what sickness deprived me of, for my duty, and my mind more free fromentanglements than else it would have been; and, also, I escaped the offending of the people, and contending by any law- suits with them. I found that nature itself, being conscidus of the baseness of its earthlydisposition, Both think basely of those whom it discerneth tabe earthly, and is forced to reverence those whose converse is supposed to be most with God and heaven. Three or four of my neighbors managed all those kinds of business, ofwhom I never took account; and if any one refused to ,pay ]his tithes, if he was poor, I ordered them to forgive' him. (After that, I was constrained to let the tithes be, gathered as by my title, to save the
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